Tastebuds.fm - Matchmaking for the Last.fm generation

Good idea, great name... could lead to a range of sites that match people on various niche interests like music.

Things I like.

• The design of the slash screen is awesome. Nice colours, good spacing between elements, background texture and highlighting. Ace.
• The main page looks easy to use, navigation all in one area. Nice use of jquery to improve use experience with sliders.
• Generally the whole design!

Things I'd improve

• On the splash screen use a modal window or slider to login from top right.
• Explain what the site is about a bit better. I think you could improve the wording. 'Single people' could just mean individuals rather than in the dating sense.
• Add a hover style to the links on the splash page... at the moment the large buttons don't do anything on mouse over and neither do the links in the footer.
• I'd emphasize the '100% free' icon by making the colour a bit more vibrant.
• Would be cool to add some kind of chat/IM service to the site so people could chat to each other whilst listening to each others music.
• Maybe try a light theme option too, I think the dark grey doesn't really feel positive...

Other than that it's awesome. Good work.

Dave

Nice work on this Julian, it's especially helpful that you submitted both the homepage and the interface. So helpful that I'm going to break my review up based on it.

Homepage

This is very current and you used space and proximity very well. Starbursts can be risky nowadays but you pulled it off and I really like the background texture too.

The only critical note I made was that the buttons aren't as clear as I think they could be, I look at them like a "Sign In" or "Sign Up" choice and I'm not sure visually I made that connection as intuitively as I could.

It works as is but as an alternative I'd suggest trying a different icon choice for the "not on last.fm" and maybe tweak the copy some to give the user an idea of what will happen when they click the button (we did this on a UI recently and used an asterisk under the first sentence with an explanation)

Overall, this is cool and inviting and I felt engaged when it loaded, great job.

UI

Honestly, I don't have much to offer here as I think looks great and has a nice interactive feel, you mentioned you'd like feedback specifically on potential features so here goes.

In addition to the star, envelope, etc. maybe add some cues as to what types of optional info they may have submitted (multiple photos vs. the only 1 for their profile, did they include their facebook or twitter info, etc.)

From a big picture standpoint I think you have a strong concept here and I can see it continuing to take off. I really like the logo and think the brand is very clever, best of luck with this and I look forward to any additional screens you post of it.

I find your site very appealing & cute idea.

On the 1st page -- very readable. Like the different fonts, the gradient, the slightly organic flavor. I would perhaps reduce the amount of dark space of the bottom menu so it doesn't appear to replicate the volume of the above design.

2nd page, think it's gorgeous. my one criticism is that it feels odd to have the facebook bookmarklet at left while twitter is way down at the bottom.

One of my criticisms with social networking sites is that it can be quite hard to find the site's apps ie bookmarklets & url-sharing gizmos. If you have such things, rather than including them in the faqs I'd like to see a word on the bottom menu that would steer me straight to the share apps.

Love the design of the homepage - attracted my attention right away. Nice typography, nice buttons, well used gradients. I'm probably not your target market because I can't image why I would care to what my significant other listens to :)))), but I can review the UI / design.

The 2nd screen is where the trouble starts. I myself am not really big on high contrast UI's and this is exactly that. Let's start by going over items piece by piece:

Left Column The buttons and controls are all over the place - there is no consistency. Text is white, gray, green, and BLUE! It is definitely not easy, but your controls should emit cohesiveness about them, not complexity in having to figure out what means what. The blue / pink icons are cute but those, too, could be improved. The like / facebook icons are out of place and harsh on the eyes in the dark design.

What is the update button for? Just use JS to monitor when focus leaves the field and do an AJAX call to update the results.

Top User panel Does look like there has been thought put into this. The blue tag is yet again of another color here, the link is yellow now? What is your call to action color? Is it blue / yellow / or green? What does save profile do? If I have to ask this question - it's not obvious.

Grid The icons, typography, and layout reminds me of 90's videogames which probably isn't the effect you're going for. This isn't Sam Fisher looking for a date, it's a music person, right? :) When looking by postal code or town - do we really care about the location at this point? What do the bars represent? What is US? Location again, I can guess? My suggestion would be to start with a clean grid .Use some white space around the pictures to give them spacing. Then start adding controls on top. Are people really going to click on the envelope from this view? Perhaps they'll look into the profile and then look for a way to contact the person? Why use UI space for that then in the grid?